The old boat lists, wrecked upon thistle, amid a sea of yellow and purple. Here, in this quiet Glasgow corner, up Houston’s Brae and around Mid Wharf Street to a green oasis between the basins of Port Dundas at the Forth and Clyde Canal, an abandoned ship is run aground on grass. 

No longer crammed with works and warehouses, where engines thrummed and cargoes spilled in a clamour of chains and shouts, the wharfs bubble with new industry. In one basin, a wetsuit wobbles on a board at the end of a cable, swishing left and right. In the other, whitewater churns, the motorised waves splashing a challenge for kayaks and canoes.

An M8 echo from the bottom of the Brae fades against the hum of insects that hover and dip among buttercups and bindweed. This rusting vessel, dredged from canal silt in 1993, is anchored in a new harbour and waits beneath the rain and sun. Some know it as the Cat, that name sprayed in signature or message along one side of a battered hull that has become a den, a meeting place, a shelter, a party space. A sanctuary.

* read the full story of The Scow here on my blog, GlasgowCitizen.press